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Saturday, April 27, 2013
Benazir still leading her party in electionISLAMABAD: The most popular politician in Pakistan’s largest party won’t be staging any rallies or participating in debates as May’s historic national election nears. The reason: She’s dead.
Yet Benazir Bhutto, assassinated more than five years ago, is still the standard bearer of the Pakistan People’s Party, writes the Washington Post. “In its TV commercials and banners, she has been pushed to the forefront of the party’s uphill campaign to return to power in parliament after a widely criticised five-year term. Hers is the face of the party on its official manifesto. She looms over smaller photos of her widower, President Asif Ali Zardari, and their son Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, who lead the party but are rarely seen in public,” the Post writes. The PPP’s campaign in the run-up to May 11 vote has been proscribed by security concerns. The Pakistani Taliban, which asserted responsibility for Benazir’s murder, has warned the secular party that its candidates and rallies will be attacked. In recent weeks the militants have killed several leaders and workers in the parties that formed the PPP government’s ruling coalition. That may be part of the reason that Benazir, who served twice as prime minister and was Pakistan’s only woman premier, has become a constant presence in the race. But her embattled party really has no other option but to stress its lineage, analysts say. The newly ended government was marred by an economic meltdown and persistent corruption cases against top officials. Even though the party and its coalition partners made history as the first civilian government in Pakistan’s 65-year history to complete a full term — thereby shepherding a democratic transition of power — that accomplishment hasn’t lowered the price of wheat or gasoline, given people jobs or diminished poverty.
Zardari polls miserably. The former prime minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, was drummed from office by the Supreme Court last year for refusing to submit to its orders to reopen a money laundering case against Zardari. And the public blames Gilani’s successor, Raja Pervez Ashraf, a former energy minister, for crippling electrical and natural gas shortages. Bhutto-Zardari, 24, is too young to run for a seat in the May 11 election — the minimum age being 25. In a video released Tuesday, the party heir reassured voters that he “wanted to launch the election campaign in the streets of my country alongside my workers,” but he said it was too dangerous. “Once again the enemies of peace and prosperity are standing in front of us,” Bilawal said. So the party is left with only ghosts to burnish its image, the Post notes. In campaign ads and on placards, Benazir Bhutto is always clad in a fashionable headscarf — in some photos merely casting a serene gaze, in others raising an arm forcefully, as if at an eternal rally. The latter image has been paired with one of her son giving a victory sign. daily times monitor
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk